The city has evidently undergone much recent construction since the fall of the Berlin wall and one can no longer tell the difference between East and West. There are new buildings everywhere. However, remnants of the old remain and all along the ground, there is a line demarking where the wall used to be.

It was a relief to spend the next day sitting on a train. We were in a cubicle with four German dudes who wouldn’t shut up and kept leaning over and blocking my view of the window. One of them fell asleep and snored loudly while displaying his crotch in too tight jeans. *shudder*. But then they got off and a tourist from Texas joined us as well as a typically German young woman who was tall and blond and kept chattering on her cell phone. When we got to the Czech Republic the conductor became Czech and started talking in broken English and broken German and we all squished up our faces and looked at one another in amused commiseration.